“If our faith is such that it is destroyed by force of argument, then let it be destroyed; for it will have been proved that we do not possess the truth.”
Clement of Alexandria, late 2nd Century

Saturday, February 04, 2012

"Why I am not a Christian"

The title of this blog post refers to the short book by Richard Carrier which I have just read, just in case you are concerned for my eternal salvation. Although, I have to say, the argument put forward in this book is very strong and compelling, such that, after reading this book, I am considerably closer to not being a Christian than I was before reading the book!

This is a short book, with an introduction, four chapters, and a short conclusion. Each chapter discusses an issue which leads Richard Carrier to believe that Christianity is false. The aim here is not to show that there is no God (although many of the things he says can be taken that way), the aim is to demonstrate to the reader that there is simply no justifiable reason to believe in the Christian God. The issue of whether or not there is a morally neutral, limited in power type god is not discussed, but the idea of an all powerful, good and loving God is considered and effectively refuted.

Don't believe me? Read the book. It is deliberately short and cheap (only £2.53 on Kindle in the UK, and less than £5 in paperback on Amazon UK). No, seriously, go and read the book. If you are a Christian, read the book. If Christianity is true, you will hopefully find the flaws in Carrier's argument, but if not, maybe you will find the truth. The truth will set you free, right? What have you got to lose?

The four reasons Carrier gives for his non-belief are:

God is Silent: that is, if God is as most Christians describe him, he should be able to make his message clear to everybody. And what's more he should be willing to make his message clear to everybody. The reality is, however, that most people are not aware of a clear message from God, and the message that seems to be heard by believers is not a consistent or even a non-contradictory one. Different believers get different messages and these conflict, and these lead (quite literally) to conflict. God appears to be unable to deliver a simple message to his people, let alone to everyone else. Thus, the Christian God is refuted by his silence.

God is Inert: that is, there is no evidence that there is a loving and supremely powerful God at work in the world. Innocent children suffer and die. Good people suffer and die. Innocent children of good Christian people suffer and die. God apparently does nothing to stop this. This is inconsistent with the claimed character of the Christian God, thus, God is refuted by his inactivity.

Wrong Evidence: basically, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence, and the biblical evidence is barely even mundane. The best evidence for the death and resurrection of Jesus is four non-eyewitness accounts, which contradict each other on important issues, and a bunch of letters, ostensibly from someone who never met Jesus in the flesh and only had a vision of him. And all these were written a couple of decades after the alleged events, at the earliest. How is all that sufficient evidence for the greatest claim ever made?

Wrong Universe: the Christian claim is that God made the universe and put us, the pinnacle of creation, into it. So why is 99.99999% of all creation hostile to us? As far as we can tell, if you scaled the entire universe down to the equivalent size of a house, then the tiny zone which is capable of sustaining human life is as small as a single proton! Invisibly and insignificantly small. This is not what we would expect if the universe was intelligently designed for us, but is exactly what you would expect if we are merely an accidental by-product of a chaotic universe. Carrier goes into some interesting stuff about current cosmological theories which I can't summarise here, but his case is very compelling. He also contrasts the ancient view of the universe, as assumed by the New Testament writers and which is consistent with the theory of God, with the current scientific view of the universe, which is not. Fascinating stuff, and justified in the conclusion that the Christian view of God is false.

My intention, when I started reading this book was, in the way of the scientific method, to attempt to refute each of these in turn. But the problem is, Carrier actually discusses and refutes all the 'evidence' I would have used in my attempt to rebut him. So I'll leave it to you.

If you think you can demonstrate that any of Carrier's arguments are wrong, read the book and refute them. Let me know (by commenting on this post) when you have. Seriously, I'd love to hear your reasoning. I actively want to believe in the Christian God, but my faith is currently crumbling under the weight of evidence against this position.

70 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Ricky,

Here are my responses to Carrier's four reasons:

(1) All that can be expected on the assumption of Christianity is that God will eventually bring all of us to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4), whether in this life or in the next. Contra Carrier, there is simply no good reason for believing that the God of Christianity must reveal himself with uniform perspicuity across time, space, culture, etc.

(2) It is similarly presumptuous to insist that there must be a contradiction between the existence of an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and all-loving creator God with the fact that his creatures experience suffering. It just may well be the case that such a God would allow his creatures to undergo a temporary season of suffering and difficulty before righting every wrong and revealing to them his salvation, which is just the kind of God that is postulated on Christianity (Rom 5:18; 1 Cor 15:22; Rev 21:1-4). Contra Carrier, there is simply no obvious contradiction between the fact of suffering in our world and the existence of the Christian God.

Moreover, perhaps the so-called "hiddenness of God" can be accounted for by the idea that the whole point of this life is to experience it without the manifest presence of God in the first place! Stated differently, perhaps the whole point of this life is to give us an opportunity to go our own way and rule ourselves for good or evil and that this is the sort of experience that humanity must go through before it can fully appreciate a life with God in which he rules over us directly. In other words, perhaps humanity is only in its infancy (from a spiritual perspective) and that the earth is the sandbox that God has given us at this stage, which is not to say that what we do in the sandbox called earth doesn't matter (after all, everything we do here is judged) but that our activity here is only in anticipation of a future life somewhere else.

(3) Contra Carrier, a good argument can be made for the historicity of the central miracle of Christianity that is the resurrection of Jesus. For one thing, we can be reasonably confident in the historicity of the gospel narratives when they tell us that Jesus' tomb was subsequently found to be empty by a group of his women followers given the embarrassing nature of relying on the testimony of women in 1st century Jewish culture. Secondly, we can also be reasonably confident that the first Christian leaders experienced a series of incredible events that they interpreted to be appearances of the risen Jesus given the content of their preaching (1 Cor 15:3-7) and the sincerity with which it was preached (even to the the point of martyrdom). Finally, if close scrutiny and careful analysis reveal that the Shroud of Turin is the burial cloth of Jesus, which I am almost certainly sure to be the case, then our understanding of what happened to the body of Jesus following his crucifixion must account for the highly unusual properties of the remarkable image of his crucified body that appeared on his burial cloth. In sum, it is my opinion that the conjunction of the previous three observations strongly (if not overwhelmingly) suggest the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus.

(4) Methinks Carrier is attacking a straw dog here. On my reading of Gen 1-2 it, once again, simply doesn't follow that God created the entirety of the physical universe for us and that we are the pinnacle of his creation in the physical world, at most these sorts of claims apply only to the physical world as we experience it on the earth, thereby vitiating the core of Carrier's habitability argument. Finally, it should be mentioned that the precise nature of the cosmology of the ancient Hebrews is a disputed subject in ANE studies and that we should be wary of arguments that purport to confidently describe it only to declare it to be "false" according to modern standards.

Yes, I am responding to your summaries of Carrier's arguments and have not read his book for myself (don't have the time or inclination); however, I am rather well-read when it comes to literature that is skeptical of Christianity and have read all these arguments in full elsewhere.

Speaking for myself, after spending almost 15 years working through skeptical arguments I've come to the conclusion that while some of them succeed in refuting certain claims associated with various strands of Christianity (e.g. young earth creationism, biblical inerrancy, etc.) none of them succeed as defeaters of Christian faith in general, although that's admittedly far from obvious when you're first exposed to some of them.

What evidence do you have that the empty tomb story was created in a first century Jewish culture? Early tradition reports that the Gospel of Mark was written in Rome after the death of Peter. The Christians of Rome were primarily converts from a pagan culture in which women enjoyed a higher status including the right to testify in court. Moreover, we know from Paul’s letter to the Romans that there were many important women in the Christian community. It is pure conjecture to suppose that the author of Mark would have thought there was anything embarrassing about having the women find the empty tomb.

We cannot have the slightest certainty about what the first Christian leaders experienced. The only first person appearance claim we have is Paul’s and he gives us no details whatsoever about his experience. On the other hand, we have a dozen eyewitness attestations to the Golden Plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. If we believe the former, surely we should believe the latter.

Well,I haven't read the book but I am familiar with Carrier's ideas.I have read and reread Loftus' trilogy:

"Why I became an atheist","The Christian Delusion",and "The End of Christianity",and I am you have the arguments of Carrier,Avalos,price,etc.

About Carrier's argument

"Basically, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence"

ABOUT GARY HABERMAS

He is a Christian scholar,and he REJECTS using out-of-body claims that are NOT verifiable

For 1O years he researched on medically certified,signed medical reports about VERIFIABLE near-death and after death experiences.He got 1OO such reports from hospitals and doctors.

WHAT GARY HABERMAS REJECTED

He rejected as evidence things like "I saw a light","I felt fire","I was traveling through a tunnel","I feel great peace".

He only accepted verifiable things as proof of an existence of a separation of something,a soul?a spirit?,from the body that was not the same thing as the brain.

LIKE

Suppose we were talking and there was a car accident 2 blocks away,which neither I nor you saw,we saw neither the color of the car,the gender of the drivers,the kind of car,how many people were involved.

And we are conscious,we are NOT UNCONSCIOUS.

Now what if an UNCONSCIOUS person in a hospital says he left his body and at 9 am,he went 2 blocks away and saw the accident,the cars were X color,etc.

Then the soul?went back and he told all the details,it was written down and VERIFIED.Gary Habermas got 1OO such cases.

That is empirical,verifiable evidence.There is no way the unconscious,dead,near-dear guy could have known,specially as the report was written down BEFORE the man talked with OUTSIDE persons,AS SOON as it came out.

SO?

Does it show if X religion is true?NO.Or if there is a God?NOOr if a soul is immortal?NOALL it shows is the BRAIN and MIND/soul are NOT the SAME.

ABOUT THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS

They say "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

To say a man 2,OOO years ago rose from the DEAD requires extraordinary evidence.Gary Habermas says NO.You ONLY need ordinary evidence,like the one he got.

In other words,with the evidence we have now,the idea of something,a soul? leaving a dead man and returning 3 days later and he coming back to life is not impossible.

ChECK OUT THIS VIDEO WHERE HABERMAS GIVES A VERY GOOD CASE

That of a little girl called Katie, who was under water,I mean dead,for 19 minutes.He gives all the details,the names,etc.

Unfortunately the video doesn't include the whole narration,where Habermas says the little girl told the doctors,before they asked the father and mother,that she had gone out of her body about 3 days before and she told them the music her brother was listening to,the song,the food her mother was cooking,where in the house each member was.

Later when the father came the doctor asked him what he had been doing,etc,and it coincided.

Now in "The End of Christianity",2O11, there is a chapter by Victor Stenger,atheist,on "Life after Death".

There he says no and he rejects one example given by Habemas,but he doesn't mention him,the case of "Maria and the Shoe".

If he is right then he is right.

BUT....

To my amazement,even though he thinks little of Dinesh D'Souza's book "Life after Death:the Evidence" and Dr Jeffery Long's "Evidence of the Afterlife",and I think he is correct in his critique,he never mentions Habermas' work,which he certainly must know.

I think he can't refute it,and what about the rest of Habermas' research,so he makes no mention of it.

There is empirical evidence of a another dimension,parallel world,etc,whatever you want to call it,where one exists apart from the brain.

ABOUT CARRIER

I have not read the book you have read by Carrier but I tell you,Carrier knows the work of Habermas,they know each other.

Now besides knowing Habermas,he knows Michael Licona,who is a friend of Habermas.

Licona got his doctorate in 2O11 on the theme of the evidence or non-evidence for the resurrection of Jesus option.It ran to 1OO,OOO words,several times more the usual average.He wanted to see where the evidence would really lead.

THERE WAS NO REASON TO GO FOR CHRISTIANITY

In other words,even if his research led him to the conclusion Christianity was false because the evidence was against the resurrection of Jesus,the it was OK with him.

He would have to resign as a leader in an important Christian organization.....but could still make alot of money by writing a book,a sincere book,about WHY the resurrection is false based on the evidence.

The same way Ehrman has made alot of money on why he,sincerely, thinks the NT is no good.

HERE IS THE LICONA SEMINAR,in youtube,it is LONG but GREAT

Notice he is very scientific in his method.He tells the methods used in his doctoral dissertation.

The current state of NT scholarship has it that the synoptic gospels were written within living memory of the events (50-80 CE) and contain traditions reconstructed from memory that go back to the first (Jewish) disciples of Jesus, which means that authenticity and historicity of synoptic traditions (i.e. the empty tomb narrative) can be gauged in part by what would have been embarrassing to the same 1st century Jewish culture. Moreover, the embarrassing nature of having women as the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb is also reflected in their absence from Paul's synopsis of the resurrection in 1 Cor 15 (following Wright) as well as in some of the apologetical skirmishes of the early church (see the last chapter of Allison's Resurrecting Jesus).

Anyway, that it was embarrassing for the early church to have women as the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb is not a point of contention even amongst critical scholars such as Allison.

The whole point to the criterion of embarrassment is to establish that the story goes back to eyewitnesses because it is unlikely that someone would have made it up later. You cannot apply the criterion by assuming that the story goes back to eyewitnesses. You have to look at the time when the story first appears to determine whether it might have been invented then.

Many critical scholars think the embarrassment argument regarding the women and the empty tomb is wrong, e.g., Maurice Casey, Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of his life and teaching p. 475.

Isn't it possible that the little girl was sufficiently familiar with her family's routine that there is nothing spectacular about her thinking that her mother was cooking in the kitchen and her brother was in his room listening to music? Wouldn't she be familiar with the dishes her mother usually prepared and the music her brother liked? If that is typical of Habermas' data, it doesn't sound very impressive.

The substance of my previous comment was to remind you that as per the latest in NT scholarship that the synoptic gospels are the reconstructed memories of the first (Jewish) disciples and were written within living memory of the events contained therein, which means that the criterion of embarrassment should be applied to the reconstructed memories contained within the synoptic gospels relative to the same 1st century Jewish culture in which those memories are set and in contrast with whatever pagan cultural influences might have been present amongst the Christian community in Rome as mentioned in your first comment.

I would further remind you that it is not enough to say that the events narrated by the synoptics are reconstructed memory in order to demonstrate the historicity of those events, which is where tools such as the criterion of embarrassment come into play. After all, it's perfectly possible for events narrated by the gospels to be remembered incorrectly or for fabrications to make their way into the synoptic narratives so as to fill in gaps in memory.

Lastly, it goes without saying that you can find a scholar or two that wouldn't be impressed by my brief sketch of an argument for the historicity of the empty tomb. Come to think of it, there are probably enough scholars out there that I suppose one could be found for almost any side of any argument that's been put forward concerning the historical Jesus, which is why your retort that some "scholars think the embarrassment argument regarding the women and the empty tomb is wrong" doesn't impress. In any event, you have yet to give me a good reason for thinking the argument isn't a good one.

So,the thing is since the 1 COR 15 creed was the official creed,then of course Carrier is wrong in saying the empty tomb was invented by Matt and Luke.

He can't place himself in the mentality of a typical Orthodox Jew of the 1st century in palestine to see what ANY Jew then would see as obvious.

ABOUT THE TOMB AGAIN

Josephus,according to Licona,says that yes,the Romans threw the dead bodies of CRUCIFIED victims,legal criminals for Rome, in a COMMON GRAVE,but an EXCETION was made for JERUSALEM.

SO?

So,that coincides with the gospel account Jesus.

ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Around 197O they discovered an ossuary inscribed with the name of the deceased, Yehohanan ben (son of) Hagkol.

It was found while excavating a burial cave in northern Jerusalem. Examination of the skeletal remains preserved in the ossuary revealed that the right heel had been pierced by a large iron nail, to which fragments of wood were attached.

The find clearly shows that Yehohanan had been put to death by crucifixion.

The bones are from the 1st century,before 7O AD,the man was about 29 years old.

SO?

It all confirms Josephus' information.

Of course if a scholar like John Dominic Crossan,co-founder of the Jesus Seminar,who says Jesus was thrown into a common grave or left to be eaten by the birds and dogs,wants to ignore the contrary evidence without showing convincing evidence for his idea,then he can.

Mark,Luke and Matthew all have Jesus saying he is the LORD of the SABBATH.

They all three also have him FORGIVING SINS.

For an Orthodox Jew TODAY and then,it means nothing less than claiming to be God.

VIRGIN BIRTH

Luke and MATT have it but Mark doesn't.You hear the claim:

"There is a progression,in Mark we have Jesus as only a man,but he is NOT GOD

then in Luke-Matt he had a VIRGIN BIRTH but he is NOT GOD,

then finally in John he is GOD."

An Orthodox Jew would say that since Mark 6:3 gives us the NAME of Jesus' mother and brothers and AT THE SAME TIME says he was GOD then a VIRGIN BIRTH is the logical conclusion,because God can't have a biological father.

I would say that the old "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" chestnut is misleading on the basis that technically there are no such things as "extraordinary" claims and "extraordinary" evidence, there are only claims that can be advanced and evidence that can be marshaled to their defense. Whether an individual claim or piece of evidence is "extraordinary" is not a matter of objective fact but of subjective opinion, which means that the category of "extraordinary" isn't helpful when engaging in objective research.

Returning to the case of Christianity, the materials that were canonized by the church to form the body of literature called the NT are, in fact, a remarkable collection of well-preserved ancient historical documents that contain four biographies of Jesus (the reconstructed memories of the early church that were also the substance of their testimony and preaching) as well as a collection of other writings (e.g. letters, sermons, preaching, history, prophetic) that are filled with insights pertaining to the teaching, practice, and historical context of the early church. By any modern standard of ancient history this is more than enough historical evidence with which to assess the facts pertaining to the historical Jesus and the early church. To the extent that Carrier blithely dismisses the historical value of this material, as suggested by your summary of reason number three, it only reflects poorly on his capacity as an (objective) ancient historian and not on the historical quality of the material itself.

You asserted that the embarrassment argument is “not a point of contention even amongst critical scholars.” I pointed out that Casey doesn’t buy it. I have also heard Ehrman criticize it. Neither of these men are fringe scholars. Ergo, it is a point of contention and your assertion is incorrect. Do you have any support for your claim that the latest in NT scholarship is that the synoptic gospels are reconstructed memories?

I'm not going to comment on any of the discussion above relating to near death experiences. They are evidence (in some way) for 'the supernatural' but they are not direct evidence for any specific Christian claims. So are irrelevant to the current debate.

Regarding extraordinary evidence:

Consider the following (made up) example. Suppose there are four stories in different tabloid newspapers reporting that there is a werewolf in a town near you a few years ago. While some details in the four stories don't exactly agree, the stories all feature interviews with the same teenage girl, who claimed to be walking her dog in the woods, when a half-man, half-wolf creature jumped out from the trees, ate the dog and ran back into the woods. There is also an interview with the local sheriff, who only started in the job a year after the alleged event. He claims to have regularly heard the howling of the beast, but only saw it once, and then only in a vision. However, he says he knows 'five hundred' people who also saw it once, but doesn't name them, and they make no statements confirming this.

Would that be sufficient to convince you that there once was a werewolf in the town?

No. Because, fundamentally, all your knowledge and experience tells you that there are no such things as werewolves.

Furthermore, while you know that there are no such things as werewolves, you do know that dogs sometimes go missing, people imagine weird things and sometimes make up stories.

With no physical evidence, no photos, no video footage, no corroborating stories, etc. there is no reason to believe the story.

So how is it different with Jesus' resurrection?

Fundamentally, we know that dead people do not come back from the dead with superhuman bodies.

NW: "All that can be expected on the assumption of Christianity is that God will eventually bring all of us to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4), whether in this life or in the next."

OK. My main point of agreement with Carrier on his 'God is Silent' chapter actually comes when he considers the instances where God is apparently not silent. Some believers claim to receive guidance, inspiration, 'pictures', 'words of knowledge', etc. from God. Yet these communications from God are frequently vague, sometimes contradictory and (as I've previously discussed in this post) are filtered by us through our culture. God does not and apparently cannot speak clearly to his people. Christians have slaughtered each other on the basis of supposed messages from God before now. Either God does not speak clearly enough (or at all) or we cannot understand his message. Either way, this does not give good evidence of a supremely powerful God, at best it points to a somewhat limited 'supernatural' being.

NW: "Contra Carrier, there is simply no obvious contradiction between the fact of suffering in our world and the existence of the Christian God."

Carrier doesn't only focus on suffering, only my summary of him did, as an example. To flip the question around, what exactly does God do in the world? I'd be interested to hear your answer to that.

NW: "Moreover, perhaps the so-called "hiddenness of God" can be accounted for by the idea that the whole point of this life is to experience it without the manifest presence of God in the first place! "

This one is supposition! You're basically saying that the everyday experience of the world does not correlate well with your beliefs about the world, and that (because your beliefs are true) there must be some extra factor, which you are unaware of, which would explain the discrepancy. Yes, that's it, God wants us to think that there is no God…, for some unknowable reason. This is pure philosophical speculation with no basis in evidence or even biblical reasoning, as far as I can see.

NW: "Contra Carrier, a good argument can be made for the historicity of the central miracle of Christianity that is the resurrection of Jesus. For one thing, we can be reasonably confident in the historicity of the gospel narratives when they tell us that Jesus' tomb was subsequently found to be empty by a group of his women followers given the embarrassing nature of relying on the testimony of women in 1st century Jewish culture. Secondly, we can also be reasonably confident that the first Christian leaders experienced a series of incredible events that they interpreted to be appearances of the risen Jesus given the content of their preaching (1 Cor 15:3-7) and the sincerity with which it was preached (even to the the point of martyrdom)."

As I've recently said in another post, I dispute this line of reasoning. The women, the testimony and the martyrdom of the church leaders is all part of the same story. The story which fundamentally assumes the resurrection of Jesus. All other 'facts' in that story are secondary to the primary assumption. We do know, from secular sources, that some early 'Christians' or 'Chrestians' were killed. Secular history does not really tell us what these people believed. Late 2nd century and 3rd century accounts of these martyrdoms assume that the 1st century martyrs believed the same as the 2nd & 3rd century writers, but we can't be sure of this.

It is equally possible that the witness of the women was included as a factor in the story to explain why, despite the 'fact' of Jesus resurrection some decades earlier, the story was not widely known until the 50s and 60s AD. How did people not know this before? Oh, it was because the witnesses were silly women and they didn't tell anyone (that is more or less what Mark says, from a certain interpretational point of view…).

NW: "Methinks Carrier is attacking a straw dog here. On my reading of Gen 1-2 it, once again, simply doesn't follow that God created the entirety of the physical universe for us and that we are the pinnacle of his creation in the physical world, at most these sorts of claims apply only to the physical world as we experience it on the earth, thereby vitiating the core of Carrier's habitability argument. Finally, it should be mentioned that the precise nature of the cosmology of the ancient Hebrews is a disputed subject in ANE studies and that we should be wary of arguments that purport to confidently describe it only to declare it to be "false" according to modern standards."

My summary of Carrier's argument here was very short and did not convey the main thrust of his argument. Its not a straw dog. Fair point about making assumptions about what ancient Hebrews believed. Carrier's argument went much further into explaining why the nature of the universe, as we perceive it, is more consistent with an atheist 'creation' view than a 'theist' one. He parallels both, compares them, and asks 'which is more likely?'. Viewed in parallel, his argument is quite compelling. Maybe not to the average theologian in the street, but speaking as someone with a degree in physics, I followed his arguments and found his reasoning compelling.

NW: "…none of them succeed as defeaters of Christian faith in general…"

What is Christian faith in general? I've met enough Christians and been in enough churches of various colours to realise that there is no such thing as 'the' Christian faith.

Vinny: "We cannot have the slightest certainty about what the first Christian leaders experienced. The only first person appearance claim we have is Paul’s and he gives us no details whatsoever about his experience. On the other hand, we have a dozen eyewitness attestations to the Golden Plates from which Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. If we believe the former, surely we should believe the latter. "

Yes. I agree with the Mormon parallel argument. We do have much better attestation to the existence of those plates than to the resurrection. So why are we not all Mormons?

Minoria: "To say a man 2,OOO years ago rose from the DEAD requires extraordinary evidence.Gary Habermas says NO.You ONLY need ordinary evidence,like the one he got. In other words,with the evidence we have now,the idea of something,a soul? leaving a dead man and returning 3 days later and he coming back to life is not impossible."

I don't really want to get into NDEs here. Yes, we have evidence that NDEs occur. This suggests that maybe there is more to life than the physical. However, nothing in there is consistent with the story of a whipped, crucified, stabbed and blood-drained-away man who was left in a tomb for a couple of days and yet who came back to life, apparently fully healthy, with the ability to walk through walls and fly (that's what the ascension is, right?). That needs extraordinary evidence, see my comment above.

Minoria, I will have a look at some of the youtube vids you suggest. Please, in the future, can you embed the code as links using the 'a href =' markup tags? I also find your USE OF CAPITAL LETTERS to be a bit distracting. If you have a good case, you shouldn't need to SHOUT.

The claims of Habermas are lately irrelevant to the argument of Carrier. The fact he knows him is therefore also irrelevant.

Mike Licona is an interesting guy, and I'll be interested to see what happens to him now that the evangelical backlash agains some of his statements has begun. The fact that he has a PhD thesis on the evidence for the resurrection means nothing. Robert Price has a PhD thesis demonstrating that the Bible is not inerrant. Does that mean that you will immediately give up on inerrancy? Of course not. Appeals to authority are fallacious, just like appeals to majority. A bad argument is still a bad argument even if thousands of people believe it.

Anyway, that's enough of a comment from me this morning. I'll try and get back and respond to the rest of your stuff in due course.

No, what I asserted as not being a point of contention amongst critical scholars was "that it was embarrassing for the early church to have women as the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb." I did not assert that the argument for the historicity of the empty tomb that rests on this observation (i.e. what you're calling "the embarrassment argument") was not a point of contention amongst critical scholars.

I have never really liked the “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” formulation because it invites so many quibbles about the meaning of “extraordinary.” However, I think the idea behind it is sound.

If I am outside on a pitch black night and I feel water falling on my head, I am going to think it much more likely that it’s raining than that I am being attacked by a CIA predator drone armed with squirt guns. That is because rain is a common, ordinary, well documented and well understood phenomenon while the drone with squirt guns would be utterly and completely unprecedented.

This is not to say that no evidence could ever convince me of the latter. There might be unique sounds that predator drones make and a unique splatter pattern to water fired by squirt guns and unique meteorological conditions that make rainfall a particularly unlikely explanation. It is not so much that each individual bit of evidence is extraordinary, but the combination is.

In the case of miracle stories, knowledge and experience tell me that they are overwhelmingly the product of human foibles like superstition, wishful thinking, gullibility, prevarication, and ignorance. Miracle stories that are the product of actual supernatural events are impossible to document. Therefore, a natural explanation for a miracle story is far more likely than a supernatural one just as rain is a much more likely explanation for water falling from the sky than a predator drone armed with squirt guns.

The difference between the predator drone explanation and the supernatural explanation is that I can conceive of evidence that would uniquely point to the drone explanation. On the other hand, no one has ever been able to suggest to me objective criteria by which one might distinguish a miracle story that is the product of a supernatural event from one that is the product of the usual human foibles. No one can tell me how one distinguishes an event for which the natural explanation is unknown from an event for which no natural explanation is possible.

Apologists typically point to characteristics which they believe make the supernatural claims of their religion different. While I generally don’t think that the differences are that great, there is a bigger problem. The apologist can never objectively explain why those particular differences make a difference, i.e., why I should believe that those differences make it more likely that their claims are the product of actual supernatural events.

Sorry for the capital letters but it was really due to laziness to use the / to blacken the letters for emphasis,that's all.

I think the fact that Stenger,who agrees with Carrier,doesn't address Habermas' case,but instead less exacting authors,shows he can't address them.It is not just one case but 1OO of them.

Vinny said the little girl knew the doctors before meeting them,the video say that at all.

He also asked where it says a consensus exists,a consensus is at least 95% agreement among schoars,but with the 1 Cor 15 creed it is almost universal, that the 1 Cor 15 creed was the official creed.I have read it in several books and heard it from several speakers.Licona is one of them,he is an expert on the subject.

The Jesus Seminar also accepts it,they are your guys.

1.Marcus Borg,of the Jesus Seminar,says it is just months after Jesus' death.

2.The others say it is 2 years.

3.Gerd Ludemann,the best NT expert of Germany,atheist,ex-Christian,says it is 3 years.

James Dunn,who doesn't believe Jesus ever said he was God,says it is just months.He is one of the most esteemed NT scholars,those are your guys who say it.

"The fact that he has a PhD thesis on the evidence for the resurrection means nothing. Robert Price has a PhD thesis demonstrating that the Bible is not inerrant."

You missed Licona's point,it was not if the Bible or in this case the NT information is inerrant.It was that even accepting it is not inerrant,the resurrection of Jesus,according to the controls,checks and balances as a historian,a real resurrection is the best explanation.

THE WEREWOLF CASE

You said people would not accept it as true.But what is it were prophesized in a different religion,like Judaism,that said there specifics of such a creature one day appearing?

I also gave you the links to how,according to the clear meaning of the Hebrew,it is stated the Davidic Messiah,not just any Messiah,but the Davidic one,would be Yahweh and would also be called Yeshua.That is corroboration that the gospel writers were not inventing things but saying the truth.

I already showed you also that they have,according to Judaism,Jesus saying he was God.

I don't know if you know this but the OT also has Yahweh sending Yahweh,it is God the Father sending God the Son, to Jerusalem.That also coincides with Jesus.

And that coincides with the Davidic Messiah,Davidic again,entering Jerusalem on a donkey,in Zechariah 9:9

So if there was some cultural pre-supposition that werewolves exist, you would be more likely to accept poor evidence?

Very few (not none, admittedly) of the OT 'prophecies' regarding the messiah were considered to be messianic prophecies before the time of Jesus. Take Psalm 22, it is only with hindsight that that passage has anything to do with Jesus. Nobody around the time of 0AD would read Psalm 22 and think 'this clearly shows how the messiah is going to suffer'.

Same goes for Isaiah's 'young girl' getting pregnant - this, in context, has nothing to do with the messiah but is clearly something prophesied to happen in Isaiah's day, the 'young girl' in question possibly Isaiah's own wife (as 'the prophetess' elsewhere in Isaiah. It is only when that passage is taken out of context that it can refer to Jesus.

And so on. Using OT 'prophecies' as part of an argument for the resurrection does nothing to improve the credibility of the evidence.

I am almost sure you know this but in case other readers don't.Using the criterion of dissimilarity of the historical method scholars agree that the historical Jesus said:

1.The "Son of Man" sayings

2.The "I say to you" sayings

3.The "Kingdom of God" sayings

The Son of Man sayings are 5O sayings,eighty counting the repetitions.There are found in:

Mark,John,Q or 5O sayings of Jesus common to Luke-Matthew but absent in Mark

ALso in:the Lucan material,material only found in Luke,and in the Matthean material.That's 5 independent attestations,that also accords with the criterion of independant attestation of the historical method.

And also the title"Son of Man" was never used by the Church for Jesus,so according to the criterion of dissimilarity,it was not invented by them and given to Jesus.

The phrase is from Daniel 7,which in Judaism is about the Messiah.Jesus was using it as a Messianic title.

So in Mark,Luke and Matt the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath and Forgives Sins,he is God.

Now in Qmran there is the payer of Nabonidus,where the last Babylonian king says a Jew healed him and forgave his sins.

But in the gospels the ones who accuse Jesus of claiming to be God because he forgave sins are those of official Judaism,not a marginal group like the Essenes of Qmran.

And Jesus never says:"No, you have misunderstood me."The Judaism of today comes from the pharisees,the most popular group in 1st cent. palestine.The Judaism of today is Rabbinic Judaism and in Matthew 23:2-3 Jesus approves of them as the interpreters of Mosaic law

ABOUT THE BOOK OF MORMON

The fact is there is convincing evidence that it is a fraud,of those who signed a paper saying they saw the golden tablets of the original book,several later said it wasn't true.

Ricky: As I've recently said in another post, I dispute this line of reasoning. The women, the testimony and the martyrdom of the church leaders is all part of the same story. The story which fundamentally assumes the resurrection of Jesus. All other 'facts' in that story are secondary to the primary assumption.

That the early church understood women to be the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb of Jesus is as historically well-established as anything else in NT scholarship and is not, as you imply, merely a corollary of a story that assumes the resurrection of Jesus in the first place. Moreover, that the leaders of the early church sincerely believed their testimony to the point of dying for their faith is also similarly well-attested and is not a point of serious contention in NT scholarship. It should give you pause to know that the current consensus of critical NT scholarship does not consider these sorts of historical claims as being "secondary" to the "primary" assumption of resurrection.

Ricky: It is equally possible that the witness of the women was included as a factor in the story to explain why, despite the 'fact' of Jesus resurrection some decades earlier, the story was not widely known until the 50s and 60s AD.

Do you really believe that this sort of wild speculation (for which there is almost no evidence) is "equally possible" to the conventional understanding? It is, to be sure, another historical interpretation of the same empty tomb narrative, but that alone does not mean that it is just as plausible as any other interpretation.

It's not that there's nothing of substance to commonsensical tropes such as "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" it's just that the insights that come from them need to be channeled into more sophisticated arguments.

Ricky: This one is supposition! You're basically saying that the everyday experience of the world does not correlate well with your beliefs about the world, and that (because your beliefs are true) there must be some extra factor, which you are unaware of, which would explain the discrepancy.

You are mistaken. I was merely sketching an outline that would reconcile the existence of the Christian God with the twin realities of suffering and divine hiddenness in order to show that the former is not inconsistent with the latter, which means that the presence of the latter is not sufficient to demonstrate that the former is false (contra Carrier, Ehrman, Hume).

I'll admit I made the alternative take on the testimony of the women up on the spot. Pretty good, I'm sure you'll agree... ;o)

Anyway, in this field, far more than most, the appeal to consensus is misleading and possibly even wrong.

The vast majority of biblical scholars are Christians, or were Christians when they started their studies. That means they all started their studies assuming certain things about historicity of the gospel narratives. Even if they subsequently lost faith (like someone like Ehrman), they all started with those fundamental assumptions. If they have never questioned those assumptions, they will still hold them. The majority opinion is not to question the big picture, only small details of it.

Ricky: My summary of Carrier's argument here was very short and did not convey the main thrust of his argument.

In other words, your summary of his argument was not a summary of his argument. ;)

Ricky: Carrier's argument went much further into explaining why the nature of the universe, as we perceive it, is more consistent with an atheist 'creation' view than a 'theist' one. He parallels both, compares them, and asks 'which is more likely?'. Viewed in parallel, his argument is quite compelling. Maybe not to the average theologian in the street, but speaking as someone with a degree in physics, I followed his arguments and found his reasoning compelling.

Speaking as a professional algebraic geometer who occassionally thinks about Calabi-Yau manifolds and other objects that are currently relevant to the theoretical frontiers of modern physics, color me not impressed.

That our world exists at all is amazing. That life exists at all is amazing. That you and I are conscious creatures having this conversation while our bodies are physically separated by the Atlantic Ocean is amazing. How again are the facts of our world more consistent with atheism than theism?

Granted, but at the same time most of what I've been identifying as part of the consensus of critical NT scholarship is also the consensus of non-Christian critical NT scholarship as well minus the hyper-skeptical fringe (e.g. the conventional understanding of the empty tomb narrative, the sincerity with which the early church leaders preached their testimony).

No, I did not say that. The little girl encountered the doctors when they resuscitated her. It is my understanding that people in a coma are sometimes much more aware of what is going on around them than they appear to be. We need not posit any sort of out-of-body experience to explain how she recognized the doctors when she came out of the coma.

Gerd Ludemann,the best NT expert of Germany,atheist,ex-Christian,says it is 3 years.

I believe that Ludemann says that the creed in 1 Cor. 15 represents a tradition that goes back to the early church. That means that concepts underlying the creed go back to the early church. It doesn’t mean that the creed itself was the official creed of the earliest disciples. Think of the Nicene Creed. It contains traditions that go back far earlier than its composition in 325 A.D.

Please provide me with specific citations if you have them because I don’t have a great deal of confidence in your assertions about the consensus of scholars, much less your assertions about the positions held by skeptical scholars.

BTW, I fully agree that the Book of Mormon is a load of balderdash, however, I am not aware of any evidence that the witnesses to the Golden Plates ever publicly recanted their stories. Please cite secular historians on this point rather than apologetic websites.

NW, loving this conversation. Just don't really have time to devote to it the attention it deserves.

You're right, my summary was not a summary.

Yes, the world exists (I think!) and is amazing. Yes, life is amazing.

The problem I have with the theist argument, put against Carrier's atheist argument, is that it presupposes life. God just exists. At the outset. The origin is already extremely complex and living. And from that extremely complex and living origin, a largely inert cosmos is produced with only a tiny, tiny hint of life in it.

The atheist reasoning Carrier uses proposes that the universe (multiverse, whatever) bears the hallmarks of a trial-and-error, make-it-up-as-you-go-along 'creation, of which life is neither the source or the end result, but merely an accidental occurrence along the way. I could give more details here, but that would basically involve me regurgitating Carrier's book, which I have no inclination to do. There's probably an article on his website on the subject though.

Haven't found the time to read those rebuttals of Carrier you linked to... will get there.

(And please don't give me the nonsense that William Lane Craig uses saying that God is 'simple' as he has no moving parts. The personal, eternal, timeless, creative origin of all things cannot be hidden behind the word 'simple' in any meaningful way)

Do you really believe that this sort of wild speculation (for which there is almost no evidence) is "equally possible" to the conventional understanding? It is, to be sure, another historical interpretation of the same empty tomb narrative, but that alone does not mean that it is just as plausible as any other interpretation.

The speculation is not being offered as proof that it happened that way. It is being offered as an answer to the criterion of embarrassment which states that no one would have ever invented the story. If we can think of logical reasons why the author might have considered it necessary to have the women find the empty tomb despite the potential embarrassment, we cannot claim that no one would have invented the story. It doesn’t prove anything either way. It just makes that particular criterion inapplicable.

BTW Ricky, I had the same idea and I am told that some scholars think that it is a logical argument although I have not run across them.

Moreover, that the leaders of the early church sincerely believed their testimony to the point of dying for their faith is also similarly well-attested and is not a point of serious contention in NT scholarship.

You are wrong. The traditions regarding the martyrdom of the apostles are not recognized as historically reliable by mainstream scholars. Many of them first appear centuries after the fact. Some of them are first found in apocryphal works that the church rejected as heretical like the Acts of Paul or the Acts of Peter.

Ricky: The atheist reasoning Carrier uses proposes that the universe (multiverse, whatever) bears the hallmarks of a trial-and-error, make-it-up-as-you-go-along 'creation, of which life is neither the source or the end result, but merely an accidental occurrence along the way.

Ah, that's much better. I can agree with the sentiment that if we are living in a world characterized by accidental occurrences and trial-and-error then we are probably not living in a world that is governed by a loving creator God.

But, of course, we are not living in such a world! Modern physics has already demonstrated that the (observable) physical world is governed by highly sophisticated principles that lend themselves to mathematical formulation, which in turn suggests that if any (unobservable) non-physical realm exists that it also is probably governed by highly sophisticated principles. Irrespective of whatever else the non-scientist Carrier is trying to say, at the level of the physical we are most certainly not living in a make-it-up-as-you-go-along world.

Vinny: You are wrong. The traditions regarding the martyrdom of the apostles are not recognized as historically reliable by mainstream scholars. Many of them first appear centuries after the fact.

No, you are wrong, aside from extra-canonical early church sources we have Jn 21:18-19 for Peter, Rev 11:3-12 for Peter and Paul, and also Paul's letters and Acts show that Paul was regularly persecuted for his faith and clearly telegraph the possibility that he would die for his faith.

In fact, you should know that most physicists who do not accept the existence of the non-physical think that our world is entirely determined by physical principles alone, which is to say that they think that our world could not be anything other than what it is (i.e. the exact opposite of a make-it-up-as-you-go-along world). You can take my word for it that philosophically naive non-scientists like Carrier are completely out of their depth on this subject.

Moreover, the idea that the early church leaders suffered and died for their faith at the hand of both the Jewish and Roman authorities is utterly plausible in light of their radical claim that the God of Israel had come down to earth in the form of a man in order to annull the covenant he made with Israel at Sinai (Heb 8:13; 10:9) as well as the fact that their minority faith was exclusively held over against that of the Roman polity.

In order to show that I am wrong when I say that the traditions regarding the martyrdom of the apostles are not recognized as historically reliable by mainstream scholars, you must cite mainstream scholars who consider them reliable. Simply citing the traditions themselves does not contravene my assertion.

Regarding the consensus,I would have to search for the specific books which state it,but Habermas and Licona and I think Craig have stated it.If it were not so it would have been pointed out.I know Carrier wrote about it and Habermas in a critique of his book "The Case for the Resurrection" and he never mentioned anything that it was never a consensus,though he certainly knows that Habermas says it.

All the same I will search for a text about it.

ABOUT UNCONSCIOUS ERSONS

As for your statement that people who are unconscious,the eyes would be closed in a hospital,to prevent infection,can see or hear as well as people who are awake,I can't see how that can be.

Hello Rick,

You pointed to psalm 22 nd Isaiah 7.But those passages are alot less explicit than Zechariah 9,Jeremiah,Daniel 9.

That was why I never mentioned them.In Daniel 9 it says the messiah would be "cut off,and have nothing",that means killed.

All the Jewish commentators say it means that,only recently,one called Gerald Sigal,I believe is the name,says,no,it means "to be rejected".

ABOUT ISAIAH 9

Traditional Judaism said it was about the Messiah,it says he will appear in Galilee,ike Jesus did,and calls him El-Gibbor,Mighty God,it says "on the throne of David and of his kingdom".

Eloh or God was used in Hebrew to mean powerful man,not a literal god,Moses is called god twice,but Jeremiah saying the Davidic Messiah is Yahweh means El-Gibbor is not just a metaphor.

IS ISAIAH 9 ABOUT HEZEKIAH?

That is the Jewish position today.He was the the holiest Jewish king in history but he ruled the Kingdom of Judea,which did not include Galilee.Galilee was part of the Kingdom of Israel,which was conquered by the Assyrians in 722 BC.Hezekiah never lived or ruled in Galilee,he ruled from around 72O onwards.

Noice I am referring to passages that are specific and coincide with Jesus and with Christian claims.

I want to get back to the Synoptics,I had said internal evidence shows Mark is from 5O AD,Luke-Acts and Matt from 61 AD,and since 5O% of scholars,it is Crossan who says it,believe John copied from the Synoptics,then it is from 71 AD at the most.

ABOUT WHO CUT OFF THE EAR OF A MAN

All the Synoptics say a man cut ff the ear of a man when Jesus was arrested.None say his name.

Then John tells us it was peter.We know,from,among other things,that peter was the most important of the original disciples.One reason is in Antiquity when the had a list of names,the usually included the most important person first in the list.

You see that in the lists in the gospels,here they are with peter first.It is in French but it can be translated using Google Translate:

Luke-Acts ends in 61 AD,never mentioning the martyrdoms of peter,paul and James.Nor the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple,how is that possible?Remember at the intro Luke says he is writing to convince us that what he says is true.

The reason the Synoptics don't mention peter's name is because he was still alive and they didn't want to get him into trouble.John mentions the name because peter was already dead.

The holiest day in Judaism is Yom Kippur,the Day of Atonement.Once a year the high priest would go in and sacrifice for the sins of the people.Now the sacrifice could be rejected by God and they believed certain signs showed it.

There are 2 Talmuds,the Jerusalem and the Babylonian.They both say that forty years non-stop before the destruction of the temple the Yom Kippur sacrifice was rejected by God.

In the Babylonian text says the greatest Jewish teacher then,Johanan ben Zakkai,who is considered the saviour and founder of modern Judaism,said it meant the Temple would be destroyed.

Josephus does not say forty years but he does say there were signs that the religious leaders said meant the temple would be destroyed,and he was a contemporary.

No, what I asserted as not being a point of contention amongst critical scholars was "that it was embarrassing for the early church to have women as the first eyewitnesses to the empty tomb." I did not assert that the argument for the historicity of the empty tomb that rests on this observation (i.e. what you're calling "the embarrassment argument") was not a point of contention amongst critical scholars.

I'm not sure what you are referring to by early church here. By the second and third century, the church had formed a male dominated hierarchy and the prominent role that women played in various New Testament writings was problematic.

However, the key question is whether women finding the empty tomb was problematic for the author of Mark and the community for which he wrote. The criteria of embarrassment only applies if it can be shown that it was. When it comes to that question, many critical scholars do not think that it would have been a problem.

Vinny: In order to show that I am wrong when I say that the traditions regarding the martyrdom of the apostles are not recognized as historically reliable by mainstream scholars, you must cite mainstream scholars who consider them reliable. Simply citing the traditions themselves does not contravene my assertion.

Vinny: Plausible is a long way from well attested.

It is not only utterly plausible but also well-attested across the canonical and extra-canonical literature (including the patristic sources) that the leaders of the 1st century church both suffered and died for their faith. Do you really need me to cite scholars that will hold your hand and walk you through the same argument that I've just outlined?

Vinny: However, the key question is whether women finding the empty tomb was problematic for the author of Mark and the community for which he wrote. The criteria of embarrassment only applies if it can be shown that it was. When it comes to that question, many critical scholars do not think that it would have been a problem.

It can be shown, that's why critical scholars who dispute this point (e.g. Ludemann) are a minority even amongst fellow non-Christians in the scholarly community. Here's a quick rundown of some of the evidence that Allison presents in Resurrecting Jesus (pgs 326-331):

(2) The male disciples are reluctant to believe the testimony of the women concerning the empty tomb in Lk 24:22-23.

(3) The testimony of the women is absent from the old formula in 1 Cor 15:3-7.

(4) At least one writer of the NT is comfortable in dismissing the testimony of women as "old wives' tales" (1 Tim 4:7) and some of them as "silly women, overwhelmed by their sins and swayed by all kinds of desires, who are always being instructed and can never arrive at a knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 3:6-7).

(5) The 1st century Jewish historian Josephus surely reflects the attitude of the early Jewish-Christian culture in saying that "From women let no evidence be accepted, because of the levity and temerity of their six." (Antiq 4.219).

(6) Later tradition in the NT evidently feels the need to confirm the testimony of the women in Lk 24:12, 24 and Jn 20:2f.

(7) And there is more...

So, the answer to your key question is clearly "Yes." That the testimony of the women was problemtic for the early Jewish-Christian culture in which Mark and his fellow gospel writers wrote is well-attested and should be accepted by any reasonable standard of ancient history divorced from the hyper-skeptical biases of people like Ludemann.

I have no doubt that there exists a consensus even among liberal scholars that the appearance traditions behind 1 Cor. 15 date back to the earliest Christians, but that is very different from saying that the specific verbal formulation found there was the official creed of the earliest disciples. I am not aware of any liberal scholars who think that we can be confident of that. Some scholars even think that the creed found in 1 Cor. 15 may be a combination of more than one tradition.

I think you may be reading too much into Habermas. Here is how I have seen him quoted on the subject: ”An increasing number of exceptionally influential scholars have very recently concluded that at least the teaching of the resurrection, and perhaps even the specific formulation of the pre-Pauline creedal tradition in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, dates to AD 30! In other words, there never was a time when the message of Jesus’ resurrection was not an integral part of the earliest apostolic proclamation. No less a scholar than James D. G. Dunn even states regarding this crucial text: 'This tradition, we can be entirely confident, was formulated as tradition within months of Jesus’ death.'” As you can see, he’s not claiming that everybody agrees that the creed was formulated by the earliest believers. Some scholars do and Habermas naturally considers the ones who do to be “exceptionally influential.” However, he is only claiming a consensus on the fact that the belief in the resurrection goes back to the earliest disciples.

I am certain that you are reading too much into my statements. I never claimed that people who are unconscious can see or hear as well as people who are awake. I said nothing of the kind. What I said is that people who awaken from comas sometimes report being more aware of what was going on around them than observers would have expected. I'm not saying that they are anywhere near as aware as they would be if they were awake. It may be unusual that the girl knew which doctors worked to resuscitate her, but I don’t think that it’s so unprecedented that we need conclude that supernatural forces were at work.

So Allison thinks it was embarrassing while Casey, Ehrman, and Ludemann don't think it was. It sounds to me like Allison is in the minority.

You may refer to it as handholding if you like, but I would be interested in knowing which mainstream scholars think that the martyrdom traditions are reliable. I know that Ehrman doesn't think they are.

Last I checked the number of NT critical scholars was greater than four. Besides, Ehrman is neither an ancient historian nor a professional exegete but a textual critic so his opinion on this matter is as good as mine from a professional standpoint.

Vinny: You may refer to it as handholding if you like, but I would be interested in knowing which mainstream scholars think that the martyrdom traditions are reliable. I know that Ehrman doesn't think they are.

It's one thing to say that the martyrdom traditions contain obvious embellishments and therefore cannot be taken at face value and another thing to say that they are wholly legendary and contain no historical information whatsoever. For my part, I side with the majority who recognize the former while denying the latter, which is sufficient for my purposes in referring to those traditions as evidence for the claim that early Christian leaders suffered and died for their faith thereby demonstrating the sincereity with which they shared their testimony.

In any case, why do you keep bringing Ehrman the textual critic into a discussion about ancient history?

If you have checked, then surely you can give me the names of scholars trained in history who believe that the women finding the tomb empty was embarrassing to the author of Mark as well as those who consider the traditions concerning the martyrdom of the apostles to be historically reliable.

One of the constant refrains I hear from conservative critics of Ehrman is that there is nothing new in any of his books i.e., he is just making the same arguments that liberal scholars have been making for years. If that is so, then I I can be confident that when Ehrman makes an argument, other liberal scholars are making it as well and it is in fact a point of contention among New Testament scholars.

I understand you now,I think you are referring to unverified NEPs.There are cases someone says:"I saw my spirit go out and then my friend came and said X thing to me,then Y came,it was 1O AM,et"

And it turns out it was not true,it was a trick of the mind.Habermas rejected those cases.

ABOUT 1 COR 15

Well,certainly paul says it is what the apostles taught and approved,he calls it kerygma,it means an officil teaching.That is his word.The creed has non-pauline phrases and shows evidence of being a translation from Aramaic.

If today we were to say,"it is a creed taught by our priests",nobody would think,"Well,what he really means is that some of the wording is approved,the rest maybe not."

So when paul says kerygma he meant:"This statement is approved,not just bits here and there,but the totality,by the apostles".He states it in 1 Cor 15:11.

I have to give more of the internal evidence about why Acts is from before the death of paul,James,and peter.

John A.T. Robinson,in his "Redating the NT",1977,gives as 1 reason that Luke tells us of:

1.The martyrdom of Stephen

2.The death of James,brother of John,son of Zebedee

As for me I noticed Acts 14 paul is stoned by the Jews and left for dead,but he survived.

Luke is obviously telling us that to show the sincerity of the Christians.If he knew of the later deaths of the 3 top leaders of the Church he would have said so.

ABOUT THE TARGUM

They are free translations,commentaries on the OT in Aramaic from around the 1st cent. AD that were very highly esteemed.The Targum says:

Isaiah 9 is about the Messiah

Isaiah 53 is about the Messiah

THE JESUS SEMINAR AND THE MIRACLES OF JESUS

Founded in 1985.They don't accept he did real miracles but that he did do something that was believed to be miraculous,you know,the power of the mind.Certainly not walking on water,resurrecting the dead,but something.

Marcus Borg:

“Jesus:a New Vision”(1987)(page 61) says:”On historical grounds it is virtually indisputable that Jesus was a healer and exorcist”

John Dominic Crossan,cofounder of J.S.

“Jesus:a Revolutionary Biography”(1994)(page 177)says:”Throughout his life Jesus performed healing and exorcism for ordinary people”

So adding to the arguments in favor of Mark being written in 5O AD:

1.The validity of stories about Jesus doing something taken as miracles,

2.And the many counter-propaganda embarassing passages,

One has good reasons to say the authors were sincere and not inventing as they went along.

ABOUT THE "pre-Marcan passion narrative"

Most scholars think it could be true,that chapters 14 to 16 are traditions antedating Mark.Rudolf Pesch dates it to 37 AD.Here are the technicalities about the argument,from different Positions.

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/passion.html

ABOUT RASPUTIN

He was a charlatan who has astonishing hypnotic powers,very well-documented,and actually stopped the bleeding of the Tsar's son Alexis,who has hemophilia,something medically impossible.

But then such is the power of the mind.I mention him as a modern,well-attested case,that would, for the Jesus Seminar,be what Jesus did.No miracles,just curing psychosomatic illnesses with his power of suggestion.

A BIT ABOUT THE "I say to You" sayings

Those sayings are found in all the gospels.The reason,using:

1.The criterion of dissimilarity of the historical method

2.And of multiple attestation

3.And one,like me,who accepts Mark as being from 5O AD,Luke-Acts,Matthew from 61 AD,then you have relatively early attestation.

Then those are the technical reasons the "I say to you" sayings are from Jesus,the only discussion is which ones are authentic and which ones not.

No. I am not talking about NEP’s. I am only talking about the specific case that you cited which is discussed by Habermas in that video. There is nothing about it that would lead me to believe that anything other than normal natural processes were at work.

Regarding 1 Cor. 15, I am not making any specific argument about the content of that passage. I am only addressing your claim that there is an almost universal consensus that it was the official creed of the earliest disciples. I don’t believe that any such consensus exists. However, there may well be a consensus that it was what Paul considered to be the approved formulation at the time he wrote that epistle

I see your points better now,I will research to see if I can find a scholarly book or article about the consensus or not of 1 Cor 15.

As a detail of interest to you do you know of Richard Burridge's 1992 book "What are the Gospels?".It was revised and published again in 2OO4.

He is a classicist,not an NT scholar,at least not then,who being an expert on ancient literature set out to prove that the claims by Talbert and others that the four gospels as biographies as being false.

He believed they didn't correspond to the biographical standards of Antiquity.

But to his surprise he came to the opposite conclusion after making an analysis of about 5 bios from before the gospels and 5 after them.

There are those who disagree with him but today most scholars agree the gospels are biographies,according to Licona,that is to say the authors wrote believing they were writing history.

About ancient bios and history

Then it was ok to do:

1.Time-compession,also known as telescoping,of events.

2.To do paraphrasing as long as the real ideas of the person were given.

3.To use hyperbole,like saying "it happened right away" meaning "it happened in a short time",the way one says "I will be back in a sec/minute",meaning " a short time",which is always more than a minute or second.

I have not spent much time on the genre question because it doesn't seem that important to me. The fact that the authors of the gospels may have believed that the they were recording things that really happened wouldn't mean that those beliefs were based upon reliable sources or that they really did happen.

A convert in one of Paul's churches might have had very little information about what Jesus actually said or did because Paul himself didn't know Jesus during his earthly ministry. However, the convert would know from Paul that Jesus was the prophesied Messiah so he could look in the scriptures to see what Jesus must have done during his life to fulfill the prophecies. If he wrote down what he learned about the earthly ministry of Jesus from those prophecies, he might sincerely believe that he was recording history, but it wouldn't pass muster by modern standards.

Vinny: If you have checked, then surely you can give me the names of scholars trained in history who believe that the women finding the tomb empty was embarrassing to the author of Mark as well as those who consider the traditions concerning the martyrdom of the apostles to be historically reliable.

How about Baker in "Foolishness of God" pg 261, Catchpole in "Resurrection" pgs 199-202, Campenhausen in "Tradition" pgs 75-76, Dunn in "Jesus Remembered" pgs 832-834, Gerhardsson in "Mark and the Female Witness" pgs 217-226, Lohfink in "Auferstehung" pg 45, Moule in "Introduction [to The Significance of the Message of the Resurrection for Faith in Jesus Christ]" pg 9, Placher in "Jesus" pg 169, and finally Wright in "Resurrection" pgs 607-608 not to mention academically trained historians who are also Christian apologists such as Craig, Habermas, Licona, etc.

Ricky: It would appear that, for you as well as for me, the whole case for or against Christianity hangs upon Jesus and his resurrection.

I would disagree, any robust assessment of Christianity should consider at least three different (albeit quasi-independent) avenues of investigation: the historical particulars of its central figure Jesus of Nazareth, the level to which its central narrative is both coherent and compelling when juxtaposed against the narratives of alternate worldviews, and the plausibility of its metaphysical precommitments (e.g. the existence of non-physical souls, the afterlife, the existence of God).

You have a point,that is why scholars use the criteria of the historical method to determine what can be true:

1.Criterion of dissimilarity

Using that one gets the "Son of Man","Kingdom of God" and "I say to you" sayings.

2.Criterion of coherence

If it is in accord with the archeological,historical,cultural evidence.

3.Criterion of multiple attestation

Here the "Son of Man","Kingdom of God","I say to you" sayings are multiply attested.

Criterion of early attestation

Criterion of enemy attestation

In this case we have the information by paul,an ex-enemy.

Criterion of embarrassment.

If the information is counter-propaganda like:peter denying Jesus 3 times,the unbelief of the disciples when they were told Jesus had resurrected,etc.

About something I forgot

In Ehrman's "Forged" he says some think 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16 is an interpolation,a forgery.

"“For you, brothers, became imitators of God’s churches in Judea, which are in Christ Jesus:

You suffered from your own countrymen the same things those churches suffered from the "Jews/Judeans", 15 who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us(Note:drove out the Jewish followers of Jesus) out.

They displease God and are hostile to all men 16 in their effort to keep us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. In this way they always heap up their sins to the limit. The wrath of God has come upon them at last."

I could be wrong but I think Ehrman agrees.One reason is paul says "Jews" as though he weren't Jewish himself

but the Greek word Judeios also means "Judeans",and since he is talking of the Jewish-Christian church in Judea it's more logical that he meant Judeans.

The real detail

It is "wrath of God has come upon them at last".

For some it is:a clear reference to the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple in 7O AD.

I think it is,but I think paul said it because he knew of Jesus' prophecy,if you want you can say it was a lucky guess,no problem with me,and so said:"The signs show they will be destroyed".

What do I mean by that?

I pointed that the "Jewish War,IV, 5,3" by Josephus says of signs having to do with the "Holy House",the Temple,that was taken to mean it would be destroyed.

Now paul would have heard of that and paul would have known of Jesus in Q saying "Jerusalem,your house will be deserted".Q is from 5O AD.

One can say paul meant some other disaster other than 7O AD.

It can't be because Josephus gives us the history of Judea throughout the whole 1st century till 72 AD and never mentions any disaster happening in the 3O's,5O's,etc.

Another internal detail that Mark is from before 7O AD

Christian scholar Craig Evans has pointed out that Mark 13:18 talking about events having to do with the destruction of the temple says:

" Pray that this will not take place in winter".

That would be strange to say if it was written in 7O-75 AD since then the author would have known the Jewish War of 66-7O began in the summer,not in winter.

Carrier and Ehrman reject 1 and 2 peter as forgeries.The 2 letters state clearly they were written by Peter himself.

1.Ok,Acts 4:13 says Peter and John were illiterate.

2.Then 9O% of the population was illiterate and there was a group of professional scribes who made a living writing letters for others.

I have given the arguments in favor of the 3 Synoptics being pre-7O AD,from 5O-61 AD.

Why is 1 Peter considered a forgery?

According to Ehrman in "Forged",and I am sure Carrier would agree,says it is because 1 Peter 5:13 calls Rome with the name of "Babylon".They say Rome was only called Babylon after 7O AD when it destroyed the Temple and Jerusalem,like Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon did in 586 BC.

However,I say that since the historical Peter knew Jesus said the city and temple would be destroyed then of course he could have called Rome "Babylon" in a letter before 7O AD.

About the Pastoral letters as forgeries

Ehrman in "Forged" says most scholars says Titus,1 and 2 Timothy are by the same author,they are similar ins style.

They can not be by Paul because 1 Timothy 5:18 says:

"For the Scripture says, "Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain," and "The worker deserves his wages."

It cites:(Deuteronomy 25:4)(Luke 10:7) as scripture.

Now since the historical paul died before 8O-85 AD,when Luke-Acts was written,the could not have read Luke,much less said it was the word of God.

Again,I argue Luke is before 7O AD,and finished with paul still alive.In fact the author says he was a traveling friend of paul in chapters,if I remember rightly,16,21,27,and 28,the last one.

So the author would have shown paul his writing for approval.So of course the 3 Pastoral could well be from before 7O AD.

About 2 Peter

One reason it is supposed to be a forgery is because 2 peter 3:16 says Paul's letters/not letter, but "letters", are scripture.

The argument is paul's letters were not considered the word of God in his lifetime but after his death.

However,since Luke is considered to be the word of God in his lifetime then why not his master,paul?

About 2 Thessalonians

This is the most hotly debated letter,5O% of scholars think it is by paul,the other half don't.

The reason is that paul,supposedly,expected Jesus to come back in his lifetime no matter what.That ignores the fact that he knew the condition Jesus had said for his 2nd coming,that Jerusalem accept him as Messiah.

It is in Luke,which I believe paul read.As I said before it is also in Q,which is from 5O AD.Here is Q,to verify:

http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/q-contents.html

So 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 says that before it all happens the Antichrist had to come,he says:

" That day will not come before there arises a definite rejection of God and the appearance of the lawless man"

What happened was paul saw that if during the forty years of "this generation" Jerusalem did not accept Jesus it would still be destroyed but the 2nd coming would be in the future with new signs to look for,which had been revealed to him,one being an Antichrist to come.

All 3 says they are by paul,either they are lying or not.Now paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10 says he asked God 3X,in a letter all agree is really by him,to take a thorn from his side,it was something serious.

The pastorals are different from the letters all say are by paul because of the style.I say that because of the thorn in his side,a sickness I suppose,he was incapacitated and simply gave the general ideas to a scribe,who wrote it in his own style,it was approved by paul.That was very common then.

In the pastorals paul says he will die

2 Timothy 4:6:

"For I am already being poured out like a drink offering,(Note:I am dying) and the time has come for my departure."

So paul knew Jerusalem would most probably not accept Jesus and the coming would not be before 7O AD.